Meet Marcel Ament, Senior Consultant at TIMETOACT Group. He is celebrating his first year as an IBM Champion in 2025. The recognition is exciting and motivating, an opportunity to continue building on his contributions to the community while exploring new ways to grow as part of the program.
Marcel is most energized by opportunities to share knowledge in person, whether through hands-on workshops, team enablement sessions, or larger presentations. He also enjoys turning project insights into talks and articles, giving others the chance to apply proven patterns in their own work. For him, even the informal moments such as community Q&As or hallway conversations are just as valuable, creating space to learn and contribute in equal measure. Building on this passion for sharing and learning, Marcel seeks new ways to engage with broader technical communities. In recent months, Marcel has been active in several Business Automation user-group meetups as well as IBM TechXchange Community sessions, both local and virtual. These gatherings, with their open knowledge exchange and comparisons across industries, provide enormous value.
A highlight of Marcel’s work was the rapid creation of a watsonx Orchestrate bot that transformed procurement negotiations. Delivered in just four weeks, the bot automated outreach, follow-up, and negotiation tasks, while integrating with core systems and reserving key steps for human approval. The project highlighted the speed and impact that AI-powered automation can deliver when strong teamwork and solid guardrails support the platform. This accomplishment demonstrates the practical impact of AI automation, which Marcel further explores through IBM’s comprehensive technology portfolio.
Among IBM’s other offerings, Marcel highlights Cloud Pak for Business Automation as a standout. Its ability to unite critical functions such as workflow, decisions, content, and capture gives it a versatility that is essential when tailoring solutions to complex environments. He has also noted the rising role of watsonx.ai alongside the Cloud Pak, where the integration of AI into automation brings new opportunities to innovate. With both technologies working in tandem, organizations can achieve process improvements that drive meaningful business benefits.
Since 2019, Marcel has worked exclusively with IBM technologies, often learning from Champions whose openness and shared knowledge shaped his projects. A pivotal moment came at IBM TechXchange in Barcelona in 2024, where he recalls that “seeing the Blue Jacket Champions in action was incredibly inspiring and became the starting gun for my own path to becoming an IBM Champion.” Today he aims to pay that forward by guiding others, sharing practical solutions, and strengthening the community.
For those who are interested in becoming an IBM Champion, Marcel offers this advice: “Start by sharing—consistently. Present a customer story, write a short “how we solved it” post, answer questions in the community forums, and mentor inside your company. Focus on practical impact over perfection. Build relationships with current Champions, ask for feedback, and keep your contributions visible (blogs, repos, talks). If you enjoy helping others succeed, you’re already doing what the program values.”